Neekna And Chemai

Through two friends we learn the life patterns of the Okanagan Indian people.

There are many individual voices, male and female, old and young, scattered about me. These voices expressed themselves in two languages, Okanagan and English. Okanagan was unwritten for the most part. But more often than not, as if by some magnetic pull of oral tradition, the individual tribal voices unconsciously blended together with the English voice, like braided strands of thread, into one voice, story, song and prayer. That thread stretched, unbroken to the pre-time and origin, that still lived in the mystery and power of the Okanagan language; their spoken word even translated into English as it had been for well over decades before I was born. The echo of that tribal voice, in Okanagan or English, never disappears or fades from my ear, not even in the longest silences of the people or in my absences from them. —Arnie Louie

Through two friends we learn the life patterns of the Okanagan Indian people.

This is an enhanced ebook with a read-along function. In 1935, a nine-year-old boy's family held a forbidden Potlatch in faraway Kingcome Inlet. Watl'kina slipped from his bed to bear witness. In the Big House masked figures danced by firelight to the beat of the drum. And there, he saw a figure he knew. Aboriginal elder Alfred Scow and award-winning author Andrea Spalding collaborate to tell the story, to tell the secret of the dance.

Grade level: 9, 10, 11, 12, i, s.

The writings of Jeannette Armstrong, who is an Okanagan Indian, are eloquent, forceful and innovative. Her tone is clear, her stance honest, her words shimmer in beauty. This book of poems tracks with words the lives, pain and resilience of Native peoples and their long memoried past. Jeannette Armstrong, novelist, poet, children's story writer, and educator lives in Penticton, B.C

Three Okanagan legends about animals emphasis sharing and respect.

Penny is a Native of the Okanagan Nation and is a mother of three, an artist and an activist. Throughout the novel, Penny comes face to face with the struggles of Native, or Indigenous, people throughout North America. Whether she is in the forests of Western Canada or in the desolate Mayan communities in Mexico, or even trying to get a job, Penny sees first hand the battles that Native people have to fight, from trying to keep what is theirs to trying to survive as a people.